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BOOK REVIEW
A Different Universe:
Reinventing
Physics from the Bottom Down
By Robert B. Laughlin
(New York: Basic Books, 2005)
When I was a young faculty member at Yale, an even younger graduate
student called Bob Laughlin, who was working with John Joannopoulos at
MIT, would come to visit me in New Haven. He and I shared an interest in
developing the theory of the vibrational properties of very wide band
gap materials like vitreous silica. He was typical of the very smart and
involved physics graduate students that were found in universities like
Yale and MIT in those days. I remember having some interesting
discussions with him concerning various methodologies, including using
Bethe lattices. We published a couple of papers on this as did the MIT
group, and then went in separate directions.
I remembered this interaction years later when Bob
Laughlin wrote down the wave function that described the newly
discovered fractional quantum Hall effect (at low temperatures and with
a powerful magnetic field, an electron gas can condense to form a new
type of quantum fluid) for which he later shared the Nobel prize
in 1998.
Laughlin has since gone on to consider important
questions about the nature of science and particularly of physics.
Physics used to be viewed as “reductionist” in that natural phenomena
should be described by the fewest and simplest laws and in terms of the
most elementary particles, from which one then subsequently built up
complex materials. Now there is tendency to focus more on “emergent”
phenomena like water waves, the trajectory of a baseball, turbulence,
weather patterns, etc., which are quite robust and not so dependent on
the microscopic details. For example, water waves are determined by
viscosity, density, etc., and are not dependent on the microscopic
interactions between water molecules, or even whether it is water! In
some ways, as our colleague Professor Tim Newman has pointed out, this
is just a re-branding of things we used to refer to as many body theory,
cooperative phenomena, and phase transitions. However, the new view of
emergence does go a step further in decoupling even further from the
underlying microscopic detail, which is regarded as being largely
irrelevant. Of course both reductionism and emergence will continue to
have their place and co-exist in physics, and both can yield insights
in appropriate situations.
Laughlin unashamedly champions the emergent view and
writes in a very idiosyncratic and entertaining way in this book . This
is good summer read and you will find it refreshing to look at emergence
from this perspective. I recommend the book - it is the best book I
have come across on emergence for those with a physics background.
Finally, this tale reminds me to always take the extra
time to talk and listen to ideas from graduate students. Who knows what
they may accomplish in the future. Almost all Nobel prize winners in
science started out their scientific research as graduate students.
Reviewed by Mike Thorpe, May 2007
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FROM
THE CHAIR . . .
Just a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to
join a delegation of the Materials Research Society to make the case to
congress for the support of science and science education. The Science -
Engineering - Technology Congressional Visit Day (SET-CVD) is organized
annually by a group of about twenty scientific societies including the
American Physics Society. There were over two hundred representatives
from the various societies which were split into teams of 3-5 people.
Our three person group visited the offices of Senator Kyl and
Congressman Pastor along with several other congressional offices. The
congressional offices are in about six buildings that are near to the
Capital Building. We were welcomed at each office but there was
certainly plenty of hustle and bustle since budget issues were of high
priority at that time of the year.
One of the main focuses of the visit was to express our
support for the American Competitiveness Initiative. This bipartisan
initiative develops many of the recommendations of the National Academy
of Science study titled ‘Rising to the Gathering Storm.’ This study
describes the crisis in science and technology education at every level
of our education system.
We were greeted by Congressman Ed Pastor at the beginning of our
visit, and he acknowledged his enthusiasm for the support for science.
We then spent nearly an hour with
 Legislative Assistant Richard Patrick where we explored the issues
specific to the Congressman’s district which includes the center of
Phoenix. Certainly K-12 education and workforce training in technology
industries were important concerns.
In Senator Jon Kyl’s office we had a long and detailed
discussion with Legislative Correspondent John Lee. Correspondent Lee
also noted the Senator’s support for science and science education. The
discussions explored the detailed needs of the scientific community and
the interrelationships of the different science funding agencies.
I was very impressed at the substantial issues that were discussed
in each office that we visited. From our perspective, we described the
successes of our students and the value of supporting research and
science education. Each of us had a few specific examples from our
university and certainly the growth in science and technology jobs in
Arizona served as an example of the critical needs of science education.
It appears that all of the authorizing bills of the American
Competitiveness Initiative should pass both houses of Congress. It will
be challenging to reconcile the bills from the House and the Senate, but
the larger test will be developing support for the appropriations bills
which specify the actual funds to support our science research and
education programs across the US.
Robert J. Nemanich
Professor and Chair
CONGRATULATIONS!!
Physics
student employee - Rachelle "Shelly" Robinson who
recently made the National Dean’s List. The National Dean’s list honors
high-achieving college students nationwide. Shelly is a junior at ASU
currently pursuing a double major in Performance Theatre and Marketing.
Comments, questions, or content suggestions can be directed to
Peg Stuart at margaret.stuart@asu.edu
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